Social housing will see $46.8M facelift

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Social housing providers are gearing up for $46.8 million in renovations over the next two years.

That’s Ottawa’s portion of the Social Housing Renovation and Retrofit Program, announced last month. On Monday, the city’s community and protective services committee will decide how the funds are distributed.

Ottawa Community Housing, which owns two-thirds of the city’s public housing stock, will receive $36.5 million. Other social housing providers will share the remaining funds, with $2 million going to retrofit the Chinese Community Building.

Jo-Anne Poirier CEO of Ottawa Community Housing said much of the work would focus on energy efficiency improvements like replacing windows and doors.

She said they would also be looking at replacing old elevators, bathrooms and kitchens. “An example would the kinds of renovation we undertook at Banff-Ledbury, we’re going to be undertaking in some of the other communities,” she said.

Poirier said they were very pleased about the funding, but there is still much more to be done. OCH had planned to spend around $130 million on building improvements over the next two years. Poirier said they would be applying “every single grant that we can” to help fund the renovations, but she said they would have to borrow some money to reach there targets.

“It’s not going to address all of our needs but it’s certainly going to represent a very healthy start over the next two years and we certainly intend to hit the ground running,” she said.